Senators Burr, Feinstein Hopelessly Dependent On Encryption In Efforts To Pass Encryption-Destroying Law

May 4, 2017

WASHINGTON D.C. - In the weeks leading up to the reveal of the Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 - which would force anyone using encryption to build in a backdoor, thereby defeating the entire point - representatives from Burr's and Feinstein's offices confirmed that, in the process of drafting this legislation, both the senators and their staff relied mightily on an encryption security blanket that would be blown to smithereens as a result of the bill's passage. Device encryption, protected communications, and secure databases are just a few instances of applications that were both essential to, and would be eviscerated by, the proposed regulation.

When preparing the bill, staff members of Burr and Feinstein were able to freely send Transport Layer Security (TLS)-protected emails and messages to each other over the open internet without fear of intercept by a malicious actor or foreign government. Additionally, the senators had the ability to read, store, and send confidential information about preparing the legislation from personal devices that, if lost or stolen, would be impractical to compromise thanks to the ironclad encryption that they tirelessly sought to undermine. Feinstein's office released a statement today on its website, which uses a server that sends queries a soon-to-be-castrated encrypted database. The statement reads, "Dianne Feinstein is committed in her mission to protect the people of the United States by thwarting every attempt they make to keep secrets from us. As the song goes: secrets, secrets, are no fun. Secrets, secrets, hurt someone."